Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Rogue American WomanBy Maureen DowdPublished: November 17, 2009

Note:This story was one of last week's five most viewed features on the NYT website. There is no dount that Sarah Palin's book is creating huge interest worldwide. Harper Collins released the title in New Zealand. yesterday, November 25. BB.

Maureen Dowd writes:Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s book is “An American Life.”Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans — ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans.If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage, living “bass-ackwards.”Palin is so determinedly American that, when she went into labor with Willow on the Fourth of July while kayaking on Memory Lake in Wasilla, she writes, “I so wanted a patriotic baby that I paddled as hard as I could to speed up the contractions, but she held out until the next day.”

I approached reading her book with trepidation, worried I might learn that I am not a real American, dang it, just another dreaded, jaded “enlightened elite.”I was born and live in Washington, D.C., after all. Now you’d think that this would be a rather patriotic city to call home, but Palin paints it as a cross between Sodom and Dante’s Fifth Circle.

Here is what the former Alaska governor censoriously writes about “shenanigans” in two capital cities: “Politically, Juneau always had a reputation for being a lot like Animal House: drinking and bowling, drunken brawls, countless affairs, and garden variety lunchtime trysts. It’s been known at times to be like a frat house filled with freshmen away from their parents for the very first time. At other times, the capital city’s underside was even darker: clandestine political liaisons and secret meetings, unethical deeds and downright illegal acts.”

She concludes: “In short, it was a lot like Washington, D.C.”

Indeed, Sarah explains that the reason she wanted to join the McCain campaign was because she and Todd could contribute something rare and special: “We are everyday Americans.”“We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans,” she writes, “could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”Read Dowd's full piece at NYT.Footnote:Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent.